Latin becoming extinct

How bad would the barbarian invasions have to get in order for Latin/Romance to become completely extinct?

ASB levels of needless and damaging bloodshed over the course of generations.
The sort of concentrated effort needed to actually kill off latin would likely galvanize what was left of the Romans, it's just not possible. I can't stress hard enough how implausible this is.
 
Barbarian invasion hardly can destroy Lation or its successor languages. It would need organised and large scale genocide. Best way sweep Latin away is that Romans never expand outside of Latium and Etruscians conquer area and absord Romans.
 
It is not that ASB-ish. Latin was lost in Britain and North Africa (or has it survived somewhere there?), and Greek has been lost in most of the eastern half. We need to replace Latin with a new high-status language that the population will shift to.

Arabic has had some success, so if we do this in a bookish way, we get the Germanic invaders not to acquire Latin literacy and administration, but to acquire literacy and administration, translated into Germanic. The new kingdoms will have a strong cadre of administrators and scribes, using Germanic languages only.

The church abandons Latin for Germanic.
 
It is not that ASB-ish. Latin was lost in Britain and North Africa (or has it survived somewhere there?)

Both of your examples are places barely romanized, the extent to which anyone spoke latin at all in Africa or Britain was miniscule. Not to mention in those areas latin was already competing with the indigenous languages, when new ones came in that simply slapped latin out of the competition.

There is no way to replicate the loss of latin in Africa or Britain in Gaul, Hispania, Italia or anywhere else you may find Germans in Roman territory.
 
The problem seems to be twofold. First the Germans are too few in number, and so are swamped by the local population. Second, The Germans are not dominant in any cultural or social sphere, except warfare and becoming feudal lords.

To compare with Britain again, we had the French conquest and rule for some centuries, which in the end was watered down and lost amongst the majority population, so England is still English and not French.

In my previous post above, I suggested having an administration and an educational system using Germanic tongues only, to give the Germanic languages some status and make Latin fit only for the lower strata of society. Would that be enough? Probably not, but we have 1500 years to achieve this from AD 500. If we have a situation where some people have to learn Germanic, but no one has to learn Latin, then there would be a tendency of shift in language favoring Germanic, and given enough time Latin might be lost.
 
One way to kill Latin is to stop the establishment of the Catholic church in Rome. The Gospels, after all, were written in Greek. Greek then becomes the root language of the Christian faith and when Rome falls, remaining Latin influences mix with the regional languages, as in OTL. When printing comes along, as in OTL, the dialects of the capitals become the nuclei of the modern languages.
 
One way to kill Latin is to stop the establishment of the Catholic church in Rome. The Gospels, after all, were written in Greek. Greek then becomes the root language of the Christian faith and when Rome falls, remaining Latin influences mix with the regional languages, as in OTL. When printing comes along, as in OTL, the dialects of the capitals become the nuclei of the modern languages.
But they would still be Romance languages.
 
Germanic invaders would need to not take local wives. This would prevent the Latin mother-tongue from being taught to the sons and daughters of Germanic feudal lords.
If the early Christian church stuck with the original Greek version of the Holy Bible, that would force scribes to focus on Greek.
With luck, Greek would remain the major trade language .
 
Greek isnt Romance though...
Ofcourse Greek isn't a Romance language, but I think that Mark E's reasoning is flawed. Let me clearify:

One way to kill Latin is to stop the establishment of the Catholic church in Rome. The Gospels, after all, were written in Greek. Greek then becomes the root language of the Christian faith and when Rome falls, remaining Latin influences mix with the regional languages, as in OTL. When printing comes along, as in OTL, the dialects of the capitals become the nuclei of the modern languages.

Even if the Bible never gets translated into Latin (whic I think is unlikely) and Greek becomes the language of the church all over Europe, you would still have the majority of people speaking a Vulgar Latin (later Romance) dialect, simply because they were the great majority compared with the Greek speaking clergy. Even the clergy that would have to learn to speak Greek because they would be born into Romance speaking families.
Greek would become the language of a small elite and for most people it would be ritual language they do not understand. Even princes and dukes would speak a Romance dialect in daily life instead of the church's ritual language, just as in OTL.
The overwhelming majority in the western half of the Roman Empire were already solely speaking Vulgar Latin when Rome fell in OTL and when the New Testament got translated into Latin. You have to start much earlier if you want to get rid of Romance languages.
The basics of OTL's standard language such as Italian or French were the dialects of specific areas - Tuscany and Paris - which were based on earlier Vulgar Latin dialects which influences from other languages. French has unsurprisingly a pretty strong Germanic influence.
Church Latin on the other hand is based on Classical Latin with some Vulgar Latin influence.
Vulgar Latin and Classical Latin haven't been identical since the Roman Republic. (Classical) Latin and the early Romance laguages were stil closely related but Latin couldn't replace Romance as the basis for our modern languages. Church Greek would be as unable as Latin to do this.
Because Greek is farther removed from the Romance dialects it would probably would less influence than Latin did in OTL.

I don't say that Greek wouldn't leave a lasting mark on the languages of western Europe, it did in OTL and would even more so in TTL, but it can't take on the task of replacing Vulgar Latin as the base of the languages of Italy, France, Spain and Portugal.

We can even look at OTL:
-Latin didn't replace German even if Latin was used as the language of the church until the 16th century and in some areas even longer.
-English is a Germanic language, even after centuries of being ruled by a Norman-French speaking upper class. After a millenium of Latin as the language of the clergy! Nothing could replace the Anglo-Saxon of the Germanic invaders that came to be the base of English language.
 

scholar

Banned
It is not that ASB-ish. Latin was lost in Britain and North Africa (or has it survived somewhere there?), and Greek has been lost in most of the eastern half. We need to replace Latin with a new high-status language that the population will shift to.
Latin was a secondary and tertiary language inside of North Africa, and even less so inside of Britain. Their loss of Latin was more likely to happen than its loss inside in Greece and the Eastern Roman Empire.

The Romance Languages evolved from regional dialects widely spoken as a first language by the people, that kind of thing just doesn't change. The arrival of largely illiterate and heavily dialected German groups could never remove it on its own. You need the prominence of another strong literary language that is powerful in speech and has a massive power-base to either enforce or encourage its use. In France, for instance, maybe a third of the country actually spoke what we now call French until standardization and centralization took hold. At the time, Arabic and Greek were really the only ones capable of providing an adequate source of this. The Germans and Slavic languages and standardization were heavily influenced by the Romances and the Greek language, owing far more than its alphabet to them. It may be possible for Romance Languages to die out should two conditions be met: Arab Power extends into Western Europe through Spain while the region was heavily segmented in regards to dialects and largely illiterate. In Italy and Romania, the Eastern Roman Empire manages to attain control there and Greek gradually replaces the Latin roots. Get the Papacy to start using Greek before 1000 AD and you have a decent chance of eliminating the language family. There might be a few Basque like holdouts, but at that point you just need standardization and assimilation practices for it to die out.

The legacy of Romance languages will still be hard to ignore though.
 
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But they would still be Romance languages.
It depends on whether the success of the later Romance language is seen to satisfy the condition of making Latin extinct. Without Latin in churches, the later languages diverge farther, as regional languages in modern France, Spain and Portugal have a larger contribution than Latin. To corrupt Italian with more Germanic influences would be more difficult, but with a church attached to Greek and not Latin, the influence of Latin on later languages would be much less.
 
It depends on whether the success of the later Romance language is seen to satisfy the condition of making Latin extinct. Without Latin in churches, the later languages diverge farther, as regional languages in modern France, Spain and Portugal have a larger contribution than Latin. To corrupt Italian with more Germanic influences would be more difficult, but with a church attached to Greek and not Latin, the influence of Latin on later languages would be much less.

I am unsure what kind of "regional languages" you are talking about? The local languages around cities like Paris, Florence or Toledo were Romance dialects. So if they like in OTL develope into national standard languages they would be considered Romance languages and wouldn't fullfill the OP's challenge.
Maybe you talk about the local pre-Roman languages of these areas: they were more or less extinct.
Gallic was probably extinct by the time of the Barbarian Invasion (the Bretons, like their name suggests came from Britain). Ibero-Celtic and other indigenous languages of the Hispania were all replaced by Latin outside the Pyrenean Mountains. In Italy you might have some Greek speaking communities but that wont be enough to turn the population away from their Vulgar Latin mother tongue.

By the time of the POD (the Barbarian Invasion) Vulgar Latin was the dominant language of the rural and urban population of the Western Roman Empire. The POD is simply to late.
You can surely move the language borders in favors of non-Romance languages but you wont get rid Romance Languages.

You can have strong Eastern Roman presence on Sicily and Southern Italy and get some greek larger speaking areas by the modern era. German can replace French in some areas. Wars can devestate Venetia and make room for Germanic and slavic settlers. The Bretons could have become a mighty force. Muslims could have advantaged further into Europe, conquer Sicily and the Balearics and replace Romance there. The Vlachs never become the dominant group in former Dacia.
BUT that wouldn't be enough! Southern France, northern Spain and most of Italy are surrounded by hundred of miles of Romance speaking territory. Other languages will have a very hard time to penetrate this deep into the heartland of the former Western Roman Empire.

EDIT:

Latin becoming extinct is a scenario that simply needs a earlier POD. One of the latest PODs is IMHO the era of the late republic.
Caesar never conquers Gaul. Latin (and Greek) are limited to the coatal areas of OTL southern France. Instead of an ATL-Augustus restoring order in the Roman world, Rome is torn apart. No colonists are send to found new cities. Social and domestic issues continue to destabilize the republic. Generals rule independently over their provinces. Celtic and Germanic tribes invade.
A Gallic Empire limits the Latin language to the Italian peninsula. Vulgar Latin dies out in Hispania being repaced by Celti and Iberian languages. Africa is lost to berber tribes. Sicily and southern Italy are Hellenised and become the base of a western Hellenic Empire. Slowly Latin is limited to middle and northern Italy. Germanic and Slavic tribes devastate Europe in late antiquity. The city of Rome is mostly destroyed. Greek is by now the language of the townfolk of most of Italy. By our time Latin has gone extinct.
 
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Or have a wildly successful Arab conquest of Gaul and Italy, basically a repeat of their invasion of the Eastern Mediterranean. This allows for the gradual obliteration of the native languages and religion, à la Egypt, Syria, Andalusia, etc. Maybe have isolated regions like Sardinia and the Romansh region rebel from time to time, allowing the Arabs to crush and convert them as well.

The problem with Andalusia as an example is that there, the majority of people spoke Mozarabic, it's true however that Arab was a prestige language but still. Spain, Italy and France had been thoroughly romanized by the time the Goths/Franks/Lombards came, not to mention the Arabs, so the de-latinization would require a big government effort that I don't think a pre-modern government would be capable of undertaking.
 

Zlorfik

Banned
(I accidentally deleted that post, here it is again)

Or have a wildly successful Arab conquest of Gaul and Italy, in essence a repeat of their invasion of the Eastern Mediterranean. Assuming this results in lasting Arab rule, a gradual obliteration of the native languages and religion will ensue à la Egypt, Syria, Andalusia, etc. Maybe we can have isolated regions like Sardinia and the Romansh region rebel from time to time, giving the Arabs an occasion to crush and convert them as well.

Of course then Romanian would still be left, so you'd need yet another POD to kill them off... like more aggressive Slavic expansion. All that leaves is Dalmatian, which will probably be assimilated to Serbo-Croatian anyway, like in OTL.
 
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